Only Rawlinson had the physical and

Only Rawlinson had the physical and intellectual skills, courage, self-motivation and opportunity to make the perilous ascent and copy the monument. This was no ordinary inscription, but was written in three languages and three cuneiform scripts, like an enormous Rosetta Stone. Equipped with copies of this inscription, Rawlinson was in an enviable position to tackle decipherment of cuneiform. While based for many years in Baghdad, he also became involved in the very first excavations of the ancient mounds of Mesopotamia, sites like Nineveh and Babylon that produced many more cuneiform inscriptions, and his success in decipherment resurrected unsuspected civilizations, revealing intriguing details of everyday life and forgotten historical events. By proving to the astonished Victorian public that people and places in the Old Testament really existed (and that documents and chronicles had survived from well before the writing of the Bible), Rawlinson became a celebrity and assured his own place in history.